Signing border treaty with Moldova not a condition for Romania to join Schengen, European official

The signing of a border treaty with the Republic of Moldova is not a condition for Romania to be allowed to join the Schengen zone, stated on Monday David Brozina, European Affairs Adviser to the Interior Minister of Slovenia, the country which currently holds the EU presidency, Info-Prim Neo reports, citing NewsIn. “A border treaty with Moldova is not a precondition for joining the Schengen zone, but a matter of effective border control, so that no one could enter the EU from third countries without being checked by the Romanian border police”, said Brozina during a meeting with a group of Romanian reporters in Ljubljana. “Romania stands right at the intersection of trafficking and smuggling routes – take for instance the Afghan drugs – and it is very important for her to join as soon as possible the Schengen agreement in order to be able to control all these routes”, said David Brozina. Marko Gasperlin, a senior police officer in Slovenia, said that from the point of view of the police, it is much simpler to manage the border zone if there is a treaty with the neighboring country, giving the example of Slovenia and Croatia, which are arguing over the Adriatic coastline. According to the joint letter sent by the interior ministers of Romania and Bulgaria, the two countries intend to join together the Schengen space in 2012, a deadline considered to be “very ambitious”, but which Slovenia will support, declared David Brozina. A convention signed in Prum in 2005 by seven member countries, Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain, and later called the Schengen III Agreement, enables law enforcement bodies to exchange all data regarding DNA and fingerprint data of concerned persons and to cooperate against terrorism. In 2007 the German presidency of the EU called all the member countries to join the agreement. The signing of a border treaty has been set by the Moldovan authorities as a condition for signing the Small Border Traffic Convention with Romania.